


i don't know how to be someone you'd miss

by xoimadivaox



Series: without you all i'm ever going to be is incomplete [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment
Genre: Angst, Breakup, I APOLOGIZE, I may or may not let something happen to the Professor, Inspired by Music, M/M, Narrative of a life that blew up in the worst way possible, No Dialogue, No seriously it's sad you guys, Shane's POV, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24243163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xoimadivaox/pseuds/xoimadivaox
Summary: Surely, after all these years, they were above ugly fights that led to uglier breakups, right?Except they weren’t.
Relationships: Past Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej - Relationship, Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Series: without you all i'm ever going to be is incomplete [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776499
Comments: 45
Kudos: 50





	i don't know how to be someone you'd miss

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from _Last Kiss_ by Taylor Swift which I also played on a loop while writing this and then put _Someone You Loved_ by Lewis Capaldi on repeat when I did the final edit so.... Yeah, there's nothing cheerful about this.

It was good. So _so_ good.

Born out of years of friendship, of getting to know one another in both the most stressful and the most relaxed situations they could have been in, years of half-assed attempts at flirtation and from years of never being at the same place at the same time, it was quite possibly the best relationship Shane had ever been in, in every single way that mattered and every single one that didn’t.

For a while there, they had been worried that maybe they were taking on too much at the same time, with the launch of Watcher Entertainment, the contracts they had to uphold for Buzzfeed and starting a new relationship, but it quickly dawned on them that things were more as they were before than they were new and different. And after having done so for so long, taking care of each other was second nature to them both. Really, the only noticeable differences were the kisses and the comforting embraces Shane could give out whenever he knew Ryan was overwhelmed. But bringing each other coffees whenever they made a run or consuming an unhealthy amount of Chipotle? They’d been doing that for so long they knew each other’s orders as well as their own.

The biggest change in their lives came from when Shane didn’t renew the lease for his apartment and moved into Ryan’s, Obi in tow. They had talked about finding a place to call theirs instead but… Ryan’s kitchen still held too much of an emotional importance. It was, after all, where they had held the first ever Watcher Entertainment meeting, where they had signed the papers that officially made them co-founders of a brand new company. It had even been the company’s first address before they found a place that pleased everyone. And they’d all argue that it was the best apartment to film in when they needed to. They did eventually move to a place they both chose and Shane agreed to Ryan subletting his old apartment because, well. They weren’t totally ready to let it go just yet. (And Ryan didn’t say it, but he did want to have a backup plan in case he needed it.)

It went so well for so long that Shane forgot himself, forgot to keep an eye out for the other shoe to drop. They’d taken so much comfort and safety into one another that, surely, after all these years, they were above ugly fights that led to uglier breakups, right?

Except they weren’t.

And when it blew up… By God did it blow up.

Ryan pulled the plug on Unsolved first. The fans, while upset, thought it made sense since they weren’t Buzzfeed employees anymore, hadn’t been for a very long while. They teased that maybe the boys were too busy with Watcher and planning a wedding to keep juggling everything and the heartbreak Shane felt when he saw that first teasing tweet quite honestly made him want to throw up.

They hadn’t made a big deal out of their relationship for a various number of reasons that Shane could barely remember now, even when he took the time to think about it and focus on it all. So it made sense that they wouldn’t make a big deal of their breakup, except it was an enormous deal for Shane. So much so, that he’d started to think of his life as three key phases: Before Ryan, With Ryan and After Ryan.

The first phase hadn’t been so bad because he didn’t know what he was missing out on. The second had been absolute perfection and the last one was pure torture.

He definitely threw up when he came home one night to find all of Ryan’s stuff gone. He drank himself to oblivion and woke up the next morning with the worst hangover of his life and a bunch of tabs opened on his laptop’s browser for apartments that were up for rent. (They were all awful choices that only a drunk person could find acceptable, but Shane had to give it to his past drunk-self: moving into a new place that had nothing to do with his ex-boyfriend sounded like a great idea.)

After the last Postmortem was uploaded, people commented a lot on the fact that Shane was more despondent than he had ever been, and that even Ryan seemed to be less of his exuberant self. The fans, however, were also quick to rationalize that it was, after all, the end of an era so they assumed the Ghoul Boys were mourning their show, their baby. Neither one of them cared to fuel that particular debate but Shane knew his truth: he had had no other choice than to dissociate from what was happening if he didn’t want to end up a sobbing mess. And even that was a close call.

Meanwhile, Ryan worked more and more from home, practically only coming in to film Watcher Weekly before bolting back out the door before Shane could even think of saying something other than ‘Hi’.

Some fucked up part of Shane kept on thinking that maybe they could fix this. That maybe, just maybe, he and Ryan could find their rhythm again, that they could be _them_ again. And Shane kept on hoping until one day, Steven came into the office with a guilty look on his face, nervously wringing his hands. A brick fell in Shane’s stomach that day. Quickly followed by a thousand more when Steven admitted that Ryan had sold him his part of Watcher and that he’d just come back from the notary’s office.

His quiet sputtering of how this simply could not be, that Ryan would never give up Watcher had been met with nothing but a sad smile and a squeeze of his shoulder and Shane felt like the world was turned upside down, tilted off its axis and hurled off course all at the same time. He had gone home, dizzy with despair, drunk on grief and self-loathing. And as much as he had wanted to, he hadn’t been able to shed a single tear. He probably was all out of tears anyway.

They brought in Andrew to replace Ryan, but the longer he was there, the more Shane faded into the background. It just… It just wasn’t the same. It didn’t feel right. The fans seemed to think so too and within two months, Watcher was tanking and Shane left as well, leaving Steven to decide whether he was continuing on with a new crew or if he was shutting down the company entirely. Was it fair? No, no it wasn’t. But they both agreed that Shane’s heart wasn’t into it anymore and that him staying was only going to hurt the company in the long run. He would, however, always be welcomed back if the Professor wanted to discuss another event in the heavy heavy book of history. He had given a shrug and a maybe and had walked out. (He never went back and Obi got himself a new toy. The Professor unknowingly became a symbol of everything he had lost and while his mated teal fur broke his heart, Shane refused to fix him if he couldn’t fix everything else.)

He gave himself time to wallow, alone in his new apartment with Obi, thinking back on the countless hours he had spent with Ryan and drinking himself into a stupor. He thought back on the parties they attended together, with Ryan’s boisterous laugh that got even louder when he had a few drinks, and how he’d always manage to convince Shane to come and dance with him, regardless of how Shane inevitably resembled an inflatable tube man when he danced under the influence. He thought back on the slow dances they shared in the privacy of their apartment with some indie love songs playing in the background, Obi silently judging them from the top of the couch’s backrest. He thought of the times he’d go on and on about the Hot Daga in prevision of the next Postmortem episode only for Ryan to kiss him to shut him up. They did that a lot – kissing the other to shut them up – now that he thought about it and Shane would be lying if he said he didn’t miss those interruptions like crazy. He thought of the endless chats in the middle of the night when they were pliant and everything was quiet. He thought of the way Ryan would always whisper ‘I love you’ before he fell asleep and of how sometimes Shane had to assume that’s what he had said considering how muffled or slurred the words had been.

He kept following Ryan on Twitter through one of his burner accounts, one that Ryan didn’t know about of course. He kept tabs on what project he was in, went to see every movie he had participated in even if he had only been some sort of assistant within the crew. Shane thought it was his duty to somehow keep on supporting Ryan. He stayed in touch with some of their ex-coworkers just on the off-chance that he could sneak a “How’s Ryan by the way?” in the conversation but he rarely got the chance to. And whenever he did, everyone always saw right through him.

He hated that, seven years after their breakup, he was nothing but a stranger in Ryan’s life. Their lives had revolved around each other’s for so long, that this void of nothingness still expanding in Shane’s chest was nothing short of the worst form of torture known to mankind. He still caught himself turning around, wanting to share a thought, read a tweet out loud or bounce ideas off of Ryan only to be met with an empty apartment and it just… His breath always caught, his heart always squeezed painfully and he always had to swallow around a lump in his throat.

He hated that he didn’t even remember what had set off the Fight. He hated that he didn’t know if there was anything he could have said or done that would have fixed their relationship. He hated that he wasn’t even given the chance to try because fuck! For Ryan? For Ryan, there’s nothing he wouldn’t have done.

(He had, in a moment of weakness, tweeted that ghosts were real, just to see if Ryan was going to say something. He didn’t, of course, but ever since Ryan had packed up and left, Shane knew for a fact that ghosts were real. Just… Not in the sense they had chased after.)

He hated seeing Ryan’s new girlfriends on Instagram. He hated that all of their photos of them together had been deleted. He hated that he couldn’t bring himself to do the same thing with his own account and that he’d basically abandoned the platform for a lack of quality content to share.

He hated that he worked as a video editor at a PR company and that they were definitely disappointed in him. He knew perfectly well that the only reason he still had his job was because he was a good enough editor, but he also knew they had expected more from him. He was, after all, Shane Madej, internet personality, known for some outside the box concepts. He knew they had thought they’d scored big time when they hired him, but his ‘I’m just here to edit the footage you give me’ mentality had ended up with him painting himself in a corner with no hope of advancement. Not that he wanted any, anyway. It wasn’t like a lousy promotion was going to make him happy.

He watched from the sidelines as Ryan made a name for himself, as he skirted around interviewers’ questions about his time at Buzzfeed, about the time where Shane was the predominant figure of his life. He watched everything he could get his hands on that had Ryan’s face in, delighted in the videos where he could hear his laugh. Until he realized his laugh wasn’t the same anymore. It wasn’t a laugh that would have earned a _(wheeze)_ back in the days. It wasn’t the laugh that inevitably made Shane smile, the one that filled his heart with joy.

It was hollower. As though something was missing.

Shane tried not to get his hopes up. But he couldn’t help and wonder if Ryan missed him as much as he did. He thought about sending him a DM, had typed one countless times, had almost hit send just a little less often, his thumb hovering over the arrow for excruciatingly long minutes before he’d lose his courage, delete the message and ignored the pressure building behind his eyes.

Sometimes… Sometimes Ryan would tweet something vaguely cryptic, implying secrets that never saw the light of day, no matter the amount of pestering he got for it and Shane would read them, sitting alone on his couch and hope they were about him, somehow.

By God, he never thought it would end up like this. He never thought they'd have a last kiss before they were old and wrinkly.

_Fuck._

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [Tumblr](http://dark-lady-in-training.tumblr.com)


End file.
